APL Digital names new execs

Published on April 29, 1999.

APL Digital, Ammirati Puris Lintas' interactive media arm, announced its new senior management team April 28, following last month's resignation of several top executives due to what departing President Brian Cauley termed strategic differences with upper management.

Keith Metzger, 41, formerly an interactive media consultant and founder of San Anselmo, Calif.-based Amazing Media, succeeds Mr. Cauley as president.David Bennahum, 31, was named exec VP-strategic services; he previously served as a new-media consultant, is author of "Extra Life: Coming of Age in Cyberspace" and is a senior writer with Wired and a contributing editor for I.D. Magazine, Lingua Franca and Spin.

Douglas Rushkoff, 38, will serve as chief strategist. Mr. Rushkoff also brings a consulting background to New York-based APL Digital. He's a professor of media culture at New York University, an adviser to the United Nations Commission on World Culture and a member of the board of the Media Ecology Association. He has authored seven books on new media and popular culture.

The new executives are the first APL Digital has announced since the March resignations of Mr. Cauley and other employees, including Creative Directors Evan Lewis and Grant Collier, Director of Production and Technology Mark Avnet and Media Director Lynn Bolger.